Is it me or the bearings? Lately my bearings need to be cleaned every couple of days. Cleaning in mineral spirits, small amount of thin lube after, etc.
I bought a package of (2) new bearings from Magic Yo-yo (fast shipping from Amazon) and the first one is bad (loud, stopping after 15 sec) after about 3 throws, making my yo-yo totally responsive.
Is it my throwing? Should I be looking for a different bearing? Getting frustrated…
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This is the problem
Yes
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I know it doesn’t matter saying this but I’ve used plenty of those MYY bearing with great success. Is some kind of animal hair getting in the bearings? This is a strange thing happening for sure. Maybe just throw out those bearings and order a few from the YYE shop.
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Def could be animal hair. Have 2 dogs. But I don’t see anything but a few flecks of dust floating when I clean them
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Maybe the hair is not totally dissolving although how hair can get inside a bearing is puzzling.
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While all bearings eventually needs some maintenance, the magic yoyo bearings I’ve had seem to be very “scratchy” sounding and the plating seems to wear off quickly causing more issues.
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I would agree with Chris, magic yoyo bearings aren’t even bad, I’ve had a magic yo-yo for over 2 years and have never had to clean nor lube the bearing. I would say try to clean it and if it doesn’t work buy a new bearing, you can find them here on YYE
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Maybe a bad batch of bearings. I’ve heard here of that happening with Pixel bearings.
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Yeah I’ve got some loud pixels too.
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You have to post a link to the video - like youtube or instagram. The forum does not host videos.
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I think crucial to bearings are a good choice I hear a lot of pros use them
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I’m no expert on bearings, but the game changer for me was to just shoot compressed air in both the bearing and the bearing seat. Buy yourself a can of compressed air and hit your bearing seats and see if that helps. I’ve had much better luck with just compressed air than giving them a soak in 100% acetone honestly.
Sometimes bearings can’t be saved though and it’s just time to swap to a new one. I’ve had that happen twice so far and new shielded bearings seem to last so much longer than older unshielded bearings. It feels like the more times you clean them the shorter the period of time before you’ll have to clean them again.
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When you take it apart, is the bearing not spinning?
Try using @codinghorror’s extra special and kinda controversial (on Reddit) HyperspinTM technique:
But seriously, I think you should order some new bearings from here, I think you got a bad batch of bearings, which is more common than you would think. Here’s some the community recommends:
You can see the whole ranking list for bearings here:
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If you have dogs there might be hair inside. I have two cats and sometimes it happens that some hair gets inside. Not exactly sure how, but I found hairs in shielded bearings.
The method I use is to deshield the bearing, burn it with a lighter for a few seconds, then clean the bearing with isopropyl alcool and add a tiny drop of lube. Also make sure to clean the bearing seat.
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Yes, I’ve been using that method since before codinghorror existed. Works great.
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So you shouldn’t have to clean your Bearing that often.my favorite bearing at the moment is the crucial 2.0 10 ball, but most bearings from yye should be very good. And ive found 100% acetone “ nail polish remover” to soak your bearing in for about 6-8 minutes and swish it around a couple times works better than mineral spirits for some reason in my experience mineral spirits seemd to make my bearings loud after i soaked them in it. Just something to maybe consider or try out
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I was really excited to learn about this technique. But I tried it, all the steps except for the acetone, on a bearing that was responsive and it didn’t really make a difference. I then tried it on a bearing that was not semi-responsive, but was just a little loud and it has become semi-responsive.
Any advice?
Is the acetone necessary regardless of whether the bearing is clean? The compressed air that i have is just a couple desktop cleaning air cans, but they seemed to spin the bearing really fast. It got to make that really loud whine, and continued to spin for quite a long time. But when I spin the bearing with my finger, it only spins for a few seconds. Like 3-5.
I really like how quiet OD ball bearings are, but I’m not good enough to enjoy the flat bearing, so I’ve had to resign myself to playing loud bearings that make it easier for me to practice a trick more than once per throw. I also have enough trouble with unexpected binds in the middle of tricks without the flat bearing allowing the string to bind more easily.
I used to use acetone or mineral spirits but it just added an extra step without enough payoff in my experience. It’s annoying to have to blast out all that fluid from the bearing.
Now I just blow air through the bearing to clear it out and add a tiny bit of thin lube with a pin (never a whole drop) until the spin of the bearing strikes a balance between spinning freely and quiet.
Some bearings are just bad, though, and no amount of air blasting and lubing improves them.
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Here’s my favorite method using Acetone. An advantage of this is that you’ll be able to see what sort of crud comes out of the bearing as it shows up nicely against the white contact case.
Ivan
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